This week at TreeHugger: A new solar breakthrough holds the promise to reduce the cost of solar panels using titanium oxide, a non-toxic mineral often found in white paint. A battery breakthrough using manganese has been announced by Hitachi (this is breakthrough week!), and smart electricity meters are coming to your house.
According to Professor Max Lu of the University of Queensland, Australia, his team has grown “the world’s first titanium oxide single crystals with large amounts of reactive surfaces, something that was predicted as almost impossible.”
Hitachi Maxell has announced the development of a new lithium-ion battery chemistry. Their claims are bold, and might be too good to be true, but they pretend that they can do 20 times more power storage.
Texas utility Oncor is working with Swiss smart-meter company Landis+Gyr to roll out 3 million advanced meters by 2012. These meters allow real-time pricing and overall make the power grid much more flexible and robust by ironing out peak in demand.
TreeHugger’s EcoModo column appears every Tuesday on Gizmodo.
